I use gunboats and am new to roamer. I was wondering what I should generally be doing during the mid fight. The first map my team plays in the 6s season is Granary, and I know a jump that would take me from my entrance to mid on the left side, to the bottom of the ramp on the point by their health pack. Should I do that jump and try to surprise the demo, should I jump to their garage, or just hold crates? It's a new format to me and it's rather confusing to try to decide to what would be best for my team on mid.

Last edited by No Mercy; 21-01-2013 at 13:12.

No Mercy

I'll post here with a Q&A that I had on my column a while ago, hope it helps. TL;DR - you just have to do what you feel is right at the time. Assess the situation and try and decide what will be the best outcome. There's no harm in trying any of the available options. Maybe your first choice will work better than the 2nd against team a, but worse against team b.

The first part of this is more relevant - but it's all useful anyway.

Quote:

Q: “I’ve recently switched from demoman to soldier(roaming soldier), I’ve just got a few questions.

As a roaming soldier on granary what should i do to counter a garage rollout? Also if the their combo does a normal rollout, but the demo goes catwalk should i jump the demo? or jump their crates and deal damage from there? or something else?

As a roaming soldier on pro viaduct at mid if i get the call that their combo has taken alot of damage but say theres both scouts behind or a soldier, should i just jump the med/combo and not worry about the scouts/soldier? i know soldiers arnt that effective on viaduct, but im just seeing how i could be a bit more effective”

A:The first part of your question is a bit general and confusing, but I’ll answer both parts anyway! To counter a garage rollout (as it is with countering any aggressive rollout) you should respond with your own aggression. The enemy team doing an aggressive rollout is making a gamble on deathmatching you and attempting to end the rollout quickly. You never want to be forced into a passive position if the enemy is doing an aggressive rollout. A simple solution would be for you to jump their combo. I covered this in a mentoring thread a while back addressing “How to deal with jumpers on rollouts”. ‘Have an aggressive soldier of your own. If they don't have to deal with a soldier that's in their face then they'll stomp your team. The fact that the jumping soldier is taking your attention/ammo, if you don't have someone else returning the favour to their heavies then what will you do? It's all good and well to assume things like airshots/scouts will take out the soldier, even so he's still done a good amount of damage and taken your attention.

Last edited by No Mercy; 21-01-2013 at 13:12.

No Mercy

I guess that makes sense, I should just play off what my team is calling and act accordingly.
Another question I have is, what should I be doing during stalemates, and uber pushes? Vhalin (Very good Soldier) made a flowchart telling what to do in those situations, but doesn't say how I should be doing it. He says, if their med is down, while yours is up you should protect him, but how should I do that without becoming a second pocket? Should I watch for their roamer to bomb in, or continue to hold flank with the scouts?
If both meds are alive and uber is even, I should help the scouts, so does that mean when we push into last (or any point with an uber for that matter), should I just hang out on the flank with the scouts and try to catch them off guard? Should I jump in and damage whoever isn't getting the uber, while drawing their fire? I'm guessing you would say to do what feels right, but what if they all feel right D:

No Mercy

Part 1: Depends on what players the other team has alive, but you generally want to "float" when aiming to protect your medic while theirs is down. This doesn't mean "sit" on him, but prepare to react to any aggressive players that will jump on him. A decent amount of time you will do this, other times you will be sitting at a choke on the flank to make sure no one gets through without either you seeing them at the very least, or them eating a rocket.

If uber is even there's a lot you can do. You can play a passive "spam" style while your team pushes in (either on the combo or the scouts). If you do it on the combo, it forces an earlier uber/helps juggle them. If you spam their flank, you can coordinate with your ubered combo for them to target those flank players and get some quick kills and a player advantage.

You can also just go balls out aggressive as your ubered combo goes in. One thing I actually really like doing as roamer (main pocket, but often ring as roamer for teams), is playing the passive spam kind of deal when ubers go, and after that re-enter on the opposite side of our combo and target one player/area (eg granary last -> their pipe if their team is sitting on it) with the help of your combo.